Public Benefits of Investment in Tertiary Education in OECD Countries

Public Benefits of Investment in Tertiary Education in OECD Countries

Description and summary of charts
1. The first chart describes the benefit resulting from public investment by gender.
β’ Benefits from tertiary education are very scattered between countries.
β’ The amount of public investment does not directly translate into benefits
o The chart shows that there is not always a linear relationship between the amount of public investment and benefits.
β’ Public investment may need to further be focused on women rather than men.
o Several countries have a huge gap between men and women in terms of benefits resulting from public investment, no matter what the amounts invested are.
2. The second chart describes the detailed public investments and benefits among three different countries.
β’ These countries are chosen because:
o Czech Republic: less public investment with high associated benefit
o Denmark: high public investment with low associated benefit
o France: close to the OECD average
β’ Public investment:
o Except for the Czech Republic, direct costs are around three times of foregone earnings on tax.
o The foregone taxes on earnings for Czech Republic is very little.
β’ Benefits resulting from public investment:
o The most significant benefits come from income tax, followed by social contribution.
3. The third chart shows the effectiveness of public investment on men.
β’ OECD countries can be divided into two groups: low and high benefit.
β’ The amount of public investments does not directly translate into benefits.
o All countries that show high benefits do not invest excessive amounts on education compared with other countries.
β’ The countries that have low benefits sometimes invest largely in education. They may need to reconsider the effectiveness of their investments by studying countries in the first group.
o Some countries in both groups invest similar amounts in education but show markedly different results: low benefit (in red on the chart) and high benefit (in green).
o Other countries marked in red on the chart have low benefits despite huge public investment.
4. The fourth chart shows the effectiveness of public investment on women.
β’ In general, women generate high benefits despite receiving less public investment.
o The chart shows a hyperbolic trend.
β’ The benefits generated by the investment on womenβs education do not relate directly to the amount invested.
o Countries that invested modestly show higher benefits than other countries that invested more.
o Some countries that invested heavily on women have negative effectiveness. Their education costs more than it benefits.

In summary, the amount of public investment does not directly relate to the benefits generated by both gender. These charts clearly indicate that effective strategies in investing public money in education are more important than the amounts invested. In case of women, we need to consider investing more and more effectively. In terms of detailed investment and benefits, most significant return on investment originates from income tax and social contribution.